Chapter Text
2025, Patient Love universe
What would you have done if you weren’t afraid?
Castiel is lying on his back in bed, staring at the stars when it crosses his mind.
After his overdose, everything was so black and white that nothingfelt real anymore. And in truth, Castiel knows he had let fear take so much from him back then. So many opportunities, memories, and chances to be better were flushed down the drain because of his inability to quiet his own anxiety.
Every wound comes with a blessing, and every blessing comes at the cost of a wound. For Cas, the wound was not only losing Dean, it was losing the grip he had on any kind of normalcy. Sure, he still had Jimmy with him. But it felt like he’d lost everything else beside him. Every morning became a burden to wake up to, because not one second of his life felt like it was worth it anymore.
The price we pay for experiencing love comes in the form of grief or heartbreak. And, in the end, it’s a price we choose to pay over and over again, because it’s worth it. Because it’s what makes us human. We carry everything that’s taken from us, the heart holding every space like a weight.
There are only so many absences a heart can hold.
What would you have done if you weren’t afraid? the voice that sounds suspiciously like his twin brother’s whispers in his ear.
If Castiel were in a better place, he’d probably have found a clever turn of words. Some comparison with a shooting star disrupting the calm and ordered quiet of the sky; but the truth is it acts more as a meteorite crashing into him than a shooting star ever would.
The moon is high in the sky, letting him know just how late it probably already is without having to check the clock on his husband’s side of the bed. The light is just enough to illuminate the lines of Dean’s face and the curve of his back from where he’s lying on his side, facing Cas, and deep in sleep.
After all this time, it never fails to amaze Cas how much easier it’s been for Dean to sleep the past few years since he came back from Virginia. The first year was the hardest, especially with the PTSD-fueled nightmares that littered almost every single one of his nights, but as time passed by, it became better. Quieter. The nightmares are still here, waiting in the dark light, and sometimes they still come. But mostly, they let Dean sleep. They let Dean live.
Cas thinks of the 5-year-old in the bedroom just around the corner. The meteorite that crashed into him just seconds before makes itself known again in the form of a burning pit at the bottom of his stomach.
What would you have done if you weren’t afraid?
“Dean?” he tries, a hand gently sliding up his husband’s arm to grip his biceps just under the thin cotton of his threadbare t-shirt. “Babe.”
Along with his sleep improving, Dean also stopped waking up at every creak of the house and every engine revving down the road from the house gradually, as he went slowly through therapy for his PTSD over the years.
It doesn’t mean it takes much to wake him up, especially when it’s Cas doing it.
Barely two seconds after touching him, Cas is faced with two beautiful but definitely still half-asleep emerald eyes.
“Cas?” Dean groans, almost incoherently before he raises his head to watch the time on the clock. Another groan escapes him as he buries his face back into his pillow. “Babe, I want you to remember how much I love you before I say this, but for God’s sake, I have to take Jack to his doctor’s appointment in three hours.”
And if Cas was a little less frantic he’d probably feel more guilty. But as it is, he can literally feel his heart beating out of his chest as he all but starts hyperventilating.
Dean seems to realize that something is wrong when he’s faced with zero response other than the sound of Cas’ increasingly loud and abnormal breathing pattern.
“Cas? Honey, what’s wrong?” he says as he immediately turns on his protector mode, raising on his knees to fold Cas into his arms and safely tuck him into his chest.
Cas is shaking like a leaf, and he knows if he doesn’t calm the fuck down soon enough, all it’s going to do is evolve into a massive panic attack, and Lord, he doesn’t want that.
“Hey, calm down, everything is fine,” Dean says softly, pressing a kiss into the mess of Cas’ hair on top of his head. “I’m not mad at you, I was just making a quip. It’s fucking early.”
Dean knows him too well, knows the intricacies of dealing with the surge of anxiety that overcomes him. He’s suffered through enough of them to know talking about anything helps quiet Castiel down.
So that’s what he does.
He talks about his day at the garage yesterday, about a customer he and Benny had to turn down. He talks about how Bobby joined them for lunch afterwards, and how Charlie took time out of her day to join them as well. He talks about how happy Jack was when Dean picked him up from school, and how he went on and on about his new friend called Clark.
It takes all of five minutes for Cas’ breathing to go back to a relatively normal pattern, and another five minutes where they don’t talk anymore, where Cas simply plasters himself against Dean’s front and breathes in and out from where he’s tucked into Dean’s neck.
“What happened?” Dean asks after a while, a hand on the small of Cas’ back under his shirt while the other one still cards through the mess of his hair.
Cas huffs, pushes himself a little more tightly against Dean. His scent is still acting like a calming balm, even after all these years- the mixed smell of gas oil, sandalwood and mint with the salt of sweat. All of it pure Dean.
What would you have done if you weren’t afraid?
“Cas, I need you to talk to me,” Dean coaxes him gently, his fingers still in Cas’ hair, still tenderly scratching lightly at his scalp and helping little sighs fall from Cas’ lips.
“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” Cas mumbles against the skin of Dean’s collarbone.
“Did you kill someone?”
“What?!”
“Don’t what me,” Dean fires back immediately, but Cas can almost feel the smile on his lips as he speaks. “You’re the one waking me up at an ungodly hour of the night before going straight into a panic attack!”
“What have you done to my husband, the badass ex-super soldier who could wake up at any hour of the night and not be a grumpy baby at 4.30 AM?” Cas taunts, the corners of his lips turning up in a small smile after everything, and he can hear Dean chuckles before he responds, his hand on the small of his back pulling him firmer against him.
“First off, fuck you. Second, I’m glad to see you’re doing better if you can be a little sassy bitch after that scare you just gave me. Now, would you please talk to me?”
Castiel can recognize the edges of concern in the tone of Dean’s voice just fine, and he knows he ought to explain why the hell he just woke him up in the middle of the night on a random Wednesday.
What would you have done if you weren’t afraid? the voice repeats in his ear, and Cas snaps.
“Do you ever think about what would have happened?” he asks, drawing back just enough so that he can peer at the emerald of Dean’s eyes.
Dean squints at him in the semi-dark, moonlight highlighting the line of his jaw. “What are you talking about?”
Cas swallows audibly. He knows he’s being stupidly obtuse about this, that Dean is going to understand him. Yet he still worries. Years of working on these feelings, and yet it seems like Jimmy’s choice still has the same hold on him.
“What would’ve happened if Jimmy never did what he did to us? If-”
“Cas.”
“No, I mean it! If I hadn’t been so afraid, what would’ve happened?” he says, mouthing back the same words that have been ringing in his head for the past 15 minutes.
Dean looks at him with a puzzled look. “What do you mean, if you hadn’t been so afraid? Why are you pinning this on you? You’re not the one at fault here.”
“But-”
“No, Cas, look at me,” Dean says, before reaching for Cas’ chin with one finger and pushing up so that they can stare at each other again.
The green of Dean’s eyes is so brilliant, almost shimmery, and that’s when Cas realizes his husband is on the verge of crying.
He hates himself.
“To answer your previous question, no, I try not to think about what would’ve happened if your brother- my best friend- didn’t break us up. You wanna know why?” Cas barely has the time to nod before Dean launches. “Because I’m afraid it might kill me if I ever do.”
“Dean…” Cas says softly, and now it’s his turn to fly to Dean’s rescue.
He frames Dean’s beautiful face in both of his hands and kisses the corner of his right eyebrow, his forehead, the tip of his nose, his chin, and finally, finally, places a kiss on his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes against Dean’s lips, drawing back slightly just in time to see one single tear roll down his husband’s cheek before he wipes it off with the pad of his thumb.
“And I don’t want to,” Dean says, his voice just a little more breathless, just a little less calm than it was before. “Because this? What we have now, here, together? I will never put that in jeopardy over what could’ve happened and a thousand ifs. Okay?”
Cas lets his fingers swipe through the tears rolling down Dean’s cheeks, watches as Dean closes his eyes and lets out a little sigh at the feeling of the pads of Cas’ fingers slowly caressing his skin.
It’s later, when they’ve both cooled down and are back to laying in each other’s arms that Cas talks again. He knows Dean isn’t sleeping just from the way his breathing isn’t as neutral as it was before. So he presses himself a little tighter against him, feels the weight and coolness of the silver band on Dean’s ring finger where it’s pressed against the skin of his back, and talks into the silence of their bedroom.
“I just wish we could’ve had a choice.”
It takes a full minute for Dean to respond, but Cas lets him. It’s not like he actually needs a response, anyway.
“Would you change anything, if you had the chance?”
His voice is muffled from where his face is half-buried in Cas’ hair, and it’s almost like Cas can feel Dean’s voice resonate through his ribcage.
The sun is slowly drawing up on the horizon, the stars quietly slipping into dawn.
“Would you change anything,” Dean continues quietly, his hands heavy with a different weight where he’s holding Cas. “If you knew it could cost you what we’ve built together? If you knew it could cost you Jack?”
“No,” Cas answers immediately, a shiver running through him at the mere thought of losing it all. “But I would’ve liked it better if we had a choice back then.”
Dean sighs. Brushes another kiss against Cas’ hairline. Cas can feel the coolness of his wedding band where Dean’s hand slowly goes up his back underneath his shirt.
“Me too,” Dean breathes finally, dipping down to look at Cas, eyes tired and a tight smile on his lips. “But I’ll never be willing to jeopardize what we have with what-ifs.”
Cas nods, a sad smile on his lips, and Dean kisses him gently before promptly going back to sleep.
What would you have done if you weren’t afraid?
Cas has learned to never be still, never settle in the moment, for fear of it leaving. To be happy is a terrifying thing, because it can only exist as a fleeting thing, as its own kind of monster. We spend our lives searching for joy, only to lose it in worry and self-doubt, to find it is wrapped in the vines of the past.
Happiness is heavier than you would think.
15 years ago, in another universe
Jimmy is sound asleep when his phone rings, which is partly why his brain doesn’t grasp the dramatic aspect of the situation at hand right away when he finally answers.
It takes him at least 5 seconds for his brain to fire up.
Dean is sobbing at the end of the line, and Jimmy’s entire body goes into overdrive, because somehow he just knows.
“Dean? Dean, what’s going on?” he asks, immediately straightening up in bed, body tensing in reaction.
The thing is, Dean doesn’t cry. Jimmy would be hard-pressed to find a single time in his life when his best friend called him at ass o’clock in the morning to cry his heart out, and the worst part of it is he already knows what’s going on without a single word having been exchanged between the two of them yet.
Without even waiting for his best friend to finally respond, Jimmy gets up and looks for his beat-up Chuck Taylors to put on.
“Dean, talk to me.”
Dean’s voice is all wrong when he finally answers. It’s all breezy and broken and wrong.
“Jimmy, you gotta- please, you need to come as soon as you can. Cas, he-”
“What about Cas?” Jimmy asks, blood simultaneously stilling in his veins and boiling like it’s gonna race out of his own body.
“I think he’s taken too much, Jim. Found him in the public restroom outside of Brooke Street, I called 911,” Dean finally lets out, his voice watery. “But you need to get here Jim. You need to get here as soon as you can, I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
He’s already outside when Dean finishes, already running. There’s not much that Jimmy wouldn’t do for his twin brother, but knowing the states that both Cas and Dean must be in? He actually wishes he had the means to teleport right away.
It takes him less than 5 minutes to get to where Dean and Cas are. The paramedics are already on scene when he enters the old restroom, the blue light of the ambulance being the only thing that lights up the scene in an eerie gloom.
Dean is standing in the corner, tears steadily falling and staining his cheeks, looking about ready to pass out. Cas is lying at his feet, with both paramedics trying their best to revive him. He’s as white as a sheet, his stark hair a vivid contrast with how colorless his face is. He’s wearing the t-shirt that Jimmy gifted him for Christmas- the Red Hot Chilli Pepper one from Japan that he’d spent weeks tracking down.
Somehow this manages to make Jimmy’s heart crumple even more inside his chest.
“Dean? Dean, hey,” Jimmy says as he approaches his friend, trying really hard to focus on him rather than the paramedic currently doing CPR on his brother’s chest. “What happened? Tell me what happened.”
He puts both hands on Dean’s shoulders, boxing him in to force him to look at his face. He doesn’t. His eyes never waver from where Cas is lying.
“I don’t know,” Dean says, his voice so low that he has trouble hearing it. “I woke up and he was gone. And I don’t why but it’s like I knew-”
“You knew where he was and what he was doing,” Jimmy interrupts, his mind automatically going back to how as soon as he picked up the phone, it’s like he already knew.
Dean nods, still looking at Cas on the floor. More fresh tears roll down his face, and Jimmy’s heart breaks even further.
“I should’ve stopped him.”
As soon as he utters those words, Jimmy swipes a finger under Dean’s chin and pulls his entire face up. Suddenly, those wide and terrified green eyes are staring right back at him, and Jimmy knows what he has to do.
“Not a single one of us could have made Cas stop using. You know that. I know that. Our entire friend group knows that. Please don’t start guilt-tripping yourself into believing you or anyone else could have changed a thing. This was always going to be one of the outcomes.”
Dean scoffs, trying to escape Jimmy’s grasp to look back at Castiel, who’s now being loaded up into a gurney by the paramedic behind him. Jimmy doesn’t let him turn, but he looks at his brother as they wheel him out, an oxygen mask strapped to Cas’ face and his body covered with a foil blanket. Then he goes back to his best friend.
“Dean, I’m serious.”
“So now what? We just hope he doesn’t go back to using after this? Or we just wait until he does it again and he manages to kill himself this time?” Dean says, and as soon as he says it more tears roll down his cheeks. “Shit, we don’t even know if he’s going to make it now.”
Dean’s eyes are back on him suddenly and Jimmy sees the pain, the way his eyes are so full-blown the black almost overshadows the emerald. He looks absolutely terrified.
“He’s going to make it,” Jimmy says, more reassuring than he actually feels.
Because if he doesn’t do it, who’s going to?
“He’s going to make it, and we’re going to be right there with him. Okay?”
“But how-”
“You did the right thing calling us,” the second paramedic interrupts them as she comes behind Dean, her black hair shining weirdly under the strobing blue light of the ambulance. “A couple of minutes later would have been too late. You got lucky, finding him this quick.”
Jimmy lets go of Dean to turn and ask the question he’s fearing the answer to the most right now.
“Is he going to make it?”
I can’t lose him. Not now, not after everything. We were gonna make it out. We were all gonna graduate, I was gonna start pre-med, and I can’t do that without my brother by my side. Hell, I can’t do anything without both Castiel and Dean by my side. For the love of God, please let him be alright.
The paramedic smiles at him, unaware of Jimmy’s inner struggles.. “I can’t make guarantees but I think he is, yes. There’s a long road ahead for him, but he’s going to make it.”
At that, both Jimmy and Dean let out a long exhale. After which Dean falls apart into Jimmy’s open arms, barely hearing the paramedic letting them know which hospital they’re rolling Cas into and that they’ll be allowed to meet them there.
It’s there, as they wait for the word on Cas’ condition, that Jimmy makes a decision.
For Cas to finally agree to get better and quit using, they need one simple thing.
Be even closer together.
After all, there’s never been a thing they haven’t managed to do when it’s been only Castiel, Jimmy and Dean against the World.
Why would this time be any different?